Emails show legislative staff talked with party consultants over redistricting maps

Florida’s
legislative leaders appear to have authorized their staff to use private email
accounts, secret “dropboxes” and to engage in “brainstorming meetings” with
Republican Party of Florida consultants in attempting to draw favorable
political districts, despite a constitutional ban on such coordination.
Download E-mails (Bainter, Reichelderfer & Heffley)

The allegations arise from a lawsuit challenging the Senate and
congressional redistricting that include emails showing how top deputies of
Senate President Don Gaetz, House Speaker Will Weatherford and several of
Gaetz’s consultants were in frequent contact with consultants who drafted and
analyzed maps. Redistricting is done every 10 years to redraw boundaries of
legislative and congresssional districts to ensure equal representation.

The emails show that just a month after voters approved the
amendment banning all coordination between the party and lawmakers in 2010,
Rich Heffley, the RPOF political consultant who served as a close advisor to
Gaetz, called a redistricting “brainstorming” meeting to be held in the
chairman’s conference room at RPOF headquarters in Tallahassee.

Heffley listed the expected participants, which included
Weatherford’s redistricting chief of staff, Alex Kelly; Gaetz’s redistricting
general counsel Andy Bardos; Gaetz’s district aide Chris Clark, and the
political consultants running the House and Senate 2012 Republican election
campaigns: Frank Terraferma, Joel Springer, Andy Palmer, Marc Reichelderfer,
and Pat Bainter. Also attending: the lawyers advising the House and Senate on
their redistricting efforts, George Meros and Ben Ginsberg. Story here.

Two Republican senators, Andy Gardiner, of Orlando,
and Jack Latvala, of St. Petersburg,
sent emails using their private email accounts to the RPOF consultants.

"What does this do to my district?" asked Gardiner in
an email to Bainter after the Fair Districts coalition submitted a substitute
map during the Senate’s special session on redistricting in April.

Bainter replied, “... In fact very good. But I have to tell you,
this map is little more than a hatchet job cutting all kinds of stuff up.”

Kirk Pepper, a top aide and political advisor on the state staff
of former House Speaker Dean Cannon, sent an email to Reichelderfer in November 2011 with a link to a
congressional map, using his personal Dropbox account.

On Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, Terraferma sent a message to Heffley
and Reichelderfer saying “Here is a map…” and the attachment was listed as “Frankenstein.jpg.”

And in April, John Guthrie, the director of the Senate
redistricting staff, sent an email with a map attached, using his personal
account, to Tony Cortese of the Senate Republican office who then sent it to
Bainter.

“Didn’t know if you had seen this,’’ Cortese wrote Bainter.

The Legislature’s Senate and congressional maps are being
challenged in Leon County Circuit Court by a group of Democrat-leaning
plaintiffs and a coalition of voters groups. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the
emails are a window into what they allege is an illegal attempt at political
coordination.

“This certainly begins to pull back the curtain on the process
that had been promised to be non-partisan and transparent,’’ said Gerald
Greenberg, a Miami
attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, and Gaetz, R-Destin, refused to
comment on the meeting hosted in party headquarters with their staff, or the
emails. Weatherford defended the House’s approach.

"The House work product resulted in maps that were
unanimously upheld by the Florida Supreme Court and by the Department of
Justice,’’ he said in a statement. “We are proud of those results and believe
it was because of our transparency, openness and unwavering compliance with the
law."

Attorneys for the RPOF consultants argued in December that the
court should quash the subpoenas, suggesting they were “a fishing expedition
seeking information that is not relevant.” They argued that there was no proof
the House or Senate “utilized, considered or much less relied upon any
information submitted” by the party officials and consultants. The lawyers for
the consultants also noted that there was no attempt to depose any Democrats
and accused them of targeting Republicans exclusively.

The voters’ coalition is alleging the two maps violate the
constitutional amendments approved by voters that banned lawmakers from drawing
districts that favor any political party or individual.

Weatherford and Gaetz steadfastly asserted during the process
that they were operating with unprecedented openness and devoid of political
influence.

“For anyone to say that any type of political or incumbent
protection was considered in this mpa is just wrong,’’ Weatherford told the
House when it adopted its map in January 2012.

Last week, the Legislature’s attorneys repeatedly attempted to
shield the Legislature and the RPOF consultants from producing documents or
being questioned in depositions, arguing it was part of the Legislature’s “work
product.”

Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis rejected those arguments and,
when the lawyers mentioned the emails, a reporter for the Associated Press
requested access to them.

The 37-pages admitted into the record are one of only hundreds of
documents obtained by the plaintiffs. There is no indication whether the other
documents will make their way into the court file.